


made it another year

by BlackJacketsandPens



Series: Ardyn Yescon Week 2k18 [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn YesCon Week, F/M, birthdays are good any day of the year, carina is back!!, make this sad man happy, my lovely oc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:25:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/pseuds/BlackJacketsandPens
Summary: Ardyn Yescon Week 2018, Day 5 - "Normality"Birthdays were an odd thing. You have one every year, but if you’re alone, it’s just another day. Maybe, though, it should be something-- something to show you’re still here. Something to show that someone is thinking of you, and is glad you’ve made it this far. And god knows no one needs it more than him.





	made it another year

Ardyn Yescon Week - Day 5 - “Normality”

_Birthday -- Carinadyn_

Birthdays were a funny thing. Hers was in summer, just after spring finally faded out entirely and the weather began to get warm -- well, normally; Niflheim hadn’t been warm in years. Still, though, she hadn’t celebrated it in...in a long time. Not since she graduated university-- no before that. She can’t really recall celebrating since her parents died. Maybe it was acknowledged while she was in the orphanage, but never any gifts, any cake, any...anything to make the day special.

But still. That didn’t...it didn’t bother her much. Really, she didn’t even think about it. When you start working in the magitek labs, most of your individuality gets kind of sucked away, and childhood trauma does a good job of...well. She didn’t have friends, she didn’t have family, and really, all she had at all was a tiny corner lab in a mostly abandoned wing of the facility, a wall full of daemon samples, a caged tonberry, and the knowledge that no one cared about anything she had to say or any ideas she had to propose.

...well, and Ardyn.

And that’s why she was thinking about birthdays. Her...she still didn’t know what to call him, if she was honest with herself. Boyfriend didn’t sound right, and lover sounded-- weird. Partner? That sounded a bit impersonal, but it worked for now. It was surreal, still, that it was a thing at all. One brief moment of courage, slipping her dismissed and ignored proposal on its battered sheaf of paper into the folder of paperwork Minister Besithia had bade her bring the Chancellor -- distracting her again, she didn’t doubt, making her do any and everything to keep her from working on it anyway -- and...and then it had just snowballed.

She had never expected the Chancellor himself to be interested in her ideas for a vaccine against the Starscourge, a way to prevent the spread-- and she had expected even less for him to show an interest in _her_. Shy, beaten down, ignored Carina Lucida Anseris, daemonologist and virologist, no one important…and Chancellor Izunia had sought her out again and again to talk, at first just about her project then about herself, and then they were friends. She had gotten to see his apartment -- tiny and simple and looking barely lived in -- she had gotten to see him without his theatrics and his facade -- tired and in pain and far too old for someone that looked only in his mid thirties -- and then...and then she had found out the truth, or at least part of it.

She had fallen in love with him at some point before then, but when she found out what he was -- found out he was a daemon, that he was sick, sicker than anything she’d ever seen but not turning, sick and trapped between human and daemon, teetering on that edge but unable to fall and unable to die, either -- and those feelings hadn’t gone away...well.

Here they were now, dating. He had been so afraid, she’d learned. Afraid to let himself love, let himself get close to anyone. She knew there was still things he wasn’t telling her, but she knew enough to know that pressing him for answers wasn’t...that she should wait. If it had taken months and this much for him to feel safe enough to be with her like this, she didn’t want to risk it.

What she did want, though, was for him to be happy. And that train of thought had led her to birthdays. She had no idea when his was, but-- but she had only gone without birthdays for a decade or two. Ardyn...she didn’t know his exact age, but given that he’d mentioned Solheim once or twice, that meant he was in the thousands. And to be alone for that long...she didn’t even know if he remembered when his birthday was, let alone how old he was specifically. 

Well! She was going to fix that. It was the least she could do. He loved her. He saw her, he treated her like she mattered, like she was important. She woke up in the morning to his sleeping face, lines of age and exhaustion smoothed peacefully. She could hardly stand and cook dinner for them without him wrapping his arms around her from behind, so starved for touch was he. He kissed her like he was drowning, desperate and fierce, like he was afraid she would vanish the moment he let go. He loved her like he was running out of time and only he could see the clock ticking down, she thought, and it scared her just a little, but--

The weight of that love was...it was heavy. It was heavy, and she wanted to show him how much she loved him back, how much she would always love him. The man behind the curtain, the one who clung to her sometimes and murmured broken words in a language long dead, the one who laughed like he meant it and who loved childish things like cartoon chocobos and children’s books, who forgot to eat and tried to only eat dessert when he did remember, the real Ardyn Izunia, the one only she was allowed to see, like a fragment of a setting sun peering out from behind storm clouds.

It would take planning, though, but at least he was busy a lot. So was she, but most of it was busywork and the rest she was doing on her own time (funded by Ardyn, of course, who was in full support of her vaccine no matter what the Minister said). Ardyn was still Chancellor, and he was distracted a lot, and she used that to her advantage.

Arranging for a cake was easy, and she had been on enough dates with him by now to know every hole in the wall bakery and tiny, family-owned restaurant in Gralea (he seemed to favor those sorts of places above all others), so it was easy to find one of his favorites and order one special. That and pick some things for dinner, anyway. She was going to make a _night_ out of this, damn it.

The hard part, though, was a gift. She couldn’t think of anything...anything personal enough, sentimental enough. The problem with only scratching the surface of Ardyn’s enigma; she didn’t know what would _mean_ something. She could guess, certainly, but nothing certain. And she didn’t want to just get him something cutesy she knew he’d like, like a stuffed chocobo or-- 

Wait. That was an idea. Not the plushie, no, but...chocobo. She knew Ardyn loved birds, not just the rideable ones -- he owned quite a few books on birds, and the few times they’d ended up on that topic his eyes had lit up. It was...it was one of the few things that did that, if she thought about it. And even if it wasn’t...even if the light in his eyes was more a struggling ember than a fire itself, it was something.

Her search took her around the city, poking her head into a ton of little curiosity shops and jewelry stores, wincing at the price tags on the latter -- she wasn’t exactly making that much money, and a lot of this paycheck was already going to the dinner part of the night. But she was determined to find something nice, something that _meant_ something.

It was in a tiny little hole in the wall she’d passed three times already that she finally found what she was looking for -- not on purpose, but it caught her eye in the case and she’d known that was it. Thus armed with gift and dinner, she picked a day at random and made the orders, and convinced Ardyn to be home early. (Not too hard, really, he’d look for any excuse to avoid Zegnautus.)

There was no proper dining table in his apartment -- well, theirs, considering she was slowly and steadily moving in -- so she set the dinner up on the counter, cake in the fridge, and pulled the stools around to either side before raiding his liquor cabinet. It had been the only thing decently stocked in his entire kitchen before all this, and it was...impressive, if somewhat depressing. She commandeered a bottle of Lucian honeywine from the cabinet, putting it on the counter as well and perching on one of the stools to wait for him.

He got home soon after that, hanging his coat and that adorably silly hat of his on the coat rack by the door before turning around and seeing her, and she couldn’t help the smile as his eyebrows rose in genuine surprise. She loved seeing sincere expressions on his face-- they were incredibly rare in public, so they always felt special somehow, just for her. “Well,” he said, amused, moving to wrap his arms around her and kiss her briefly. “To what do I owe the surprise and the dinner? It’s not a special occasion, is it? I’m usually better at remembering those.”

“No, not really,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Not anything on the calendar, anyway. I was just thinking, and...when was the last time you celebrated your birthday?” He pulled away slightly as she spoke, and she could see the surprise still on his face, giving way to awe and wonder and something incredibly sad. “I don’t know when it is, but...I figured it’s better to get the date wrong than let you go another year without.” It had already been two thousand.

He kissed her again for that, leaving his forehead to rest against hers. “It’s in fall,” he murmured, soft but still audible. “The exact date escapes me, but there are a lot of ones.” His voice had a slight waver to it, as if he was fighting not to cry, but it kept steady. “I haven’t thought about it in centuries. It...stopped feeling like something to celebrate, after a while, but…”

He kissed her a third time, and she swatted him fondly. “But it’s different this time?” She asked-- there was a tiny edge of nervousness to her voice, hoping she hadn’t overstepped, but the wonder still in his eyes reassured her.

“I’m not alone this time,” he said simply, shifting to take her hands and squeeze them gently. “And that makes all the difference.”

The dinner itself was good, and honestly far better than anything she ate normally, but it was no match for the look on Ardyn’s face the whole time, still awed and struggling not to get emotional over the idea of what she’d done for him. It was such a simple thing for anyone else, but for him it was so much more than that. Something normal, something _everyone_ had -- a birthday party, even if this one was just the two of them -- but something he hadn’t experienced in centuries upon centuries. She could hardly fathom living more than a hundred years, let alone how long Ardyn had existed. And for this to be the first time in all that time....it broke her heart a little. But a lot about her beloved broke her heart.

Also worth it was the look on his face when she took the cake out of the fridge-- it wasn’t all that extravagant, just a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting, not even any truly fancy designs on the top, but it was a cake, and it was for _him_. “Don’t forget to let me have some,” she teased him gently. “I want to try it, too.”

“I’ll try to save you a slice,” he promised, laughing -- god, she loved to see him happy. It was so rare, even with her, to see him like this. And even then there were sharp edges of sadness in it, shards of pain that she didn’t know that even she could remove-- but he was happy. He was happy, and she could see in that the shadow of the man he must have been before all this, like a glimpse of the sun during a downpour. She didn’t think he could be that man again, not entirely, but...if she could make him remember what it was like to be that man, it was enough.

She whisked the cake back into the fridge before he could eat it all in one sitting, and fished the small wrapped box from her pocket as she returned to the counter and their glasses of honeywine -- she was still nursing her first, knowing she was a lightweight, but Ardyn was on his fourth and it was only because he was a daemon that she let him indulge like that. “I...got you something, too,” she said shyly, sliding the box over. “What birthday is complete without a present. I-I hope you like it.”

“I--” His voice cracked, then, and he reached out to give her hand a squeeze. “I’ll love it, whatever it is. No one’s given me anything in...well. You know.” He managed a fond smile, though his eyes were soft and wet with tears. “No matter what it is, that you bought it for me is enough for me to love it.”

She smiled back at him, but still ducked her head as he unwrapped the small box and opened it, blushing furiously with embarrassment. “I thought-- I thought you’d like it,” she squeaked shyly. “It reminded me of you, and...and I--” He’d said he’d like it, but there were some insecurities you just couldn’t shake, and she’d spent too long drowning in them. She couldn’t look up for a long moment, and the silence was a bit frightening, and-- she heard a soft noise, and then the sound of the box being put down, and a shift like he was standing, and then she gasped as Ardyn pulled her into his arms, nearly lifting her right off the stool.

“A-Ardyn, your leg--” she protested faintly, knowing he had that old injury, but she was cut off by him kissing her like he’d never kissed her before. Still desperate, still almost as if he were afraid of her vanishing, but fierce and passionate and stealing her breath, and she didn’t even process they were moving until she felt herself go sideways and her back hit the couch. Her eyes uncrossed themselves and refocused when he broke the kiss for a moment, and she looked up at him to see that he was crying, his tears tinged slightly grey due to his illness, but he was smiling. 

She didn’t think anyone had ever looked at her like the way he was looking at her now, and nothing else in the world seemed to be quite so important as those honey-colored eyes, watching her like she was the only thing that mattered. “You have no idea,” he breathed, “how much that means to me. You have no idea. And yet you still--” He broke off to kiss her, still fierce and passionate and nearly making her eyes roll back in her head. 

“I love you,” he told her breathlessly when they came up for air, like that fact was finally, truly sinking in, and it was the most overwhelming revelation in his life. “I love you, Carina. _Thank you._ ” 

The tone of voice in his gratitude was indescribable, and it nearly made her cry as well, but then he bent down for a third kiss, and this one was enough to make the rest of the night a blur of lips and hands and though they had enough sense left between them not to go all the way -- dangerous with his illness, even if they wanted to -- it was very, very close, and the next morning they’d wake on the couch together, Ardyn folded around her with his face in her hair and a smile still on his face...and Carina wanted this moment never to end.

The box still sat on the counter, the ring she’d bought him -- dark silvery pewter, a pair of wings wrapping around the band extending from an engraved sun -- sitting in it innocuously, a gesture of her love and a symbol of something she didn’t know and couldn’t yet grasp. 

**Author's Note:**

> CARINA IS BACK!!!! My OC from my fanfic _Star in Darkness,_ (also on AO3) which is also shippy as hell, and I felt like she deserved a day. Honestly this is very likely fic-canon, since there's a lot I didn't address there.
> 
> Anyway, yeah, birthdays are...wow. Something you don't think about, but...damn. Two thousand missed birthdays. Two thousand. Poor Ardyn. Something so simple, something you might not even want to think about, but...but it's your birthday. You made it. And not even in a "you didn't die" sense -- a "you're in one piece, you're intact, you did it one awful day at a time but you're here" sense. It's just as important even if you can't die.
> 
> She's a good girl, Carina, and that ring...she has no idea. She might someday.
> 
> (fun fact: Carina's birthday is June 12, and Ardyn shares my birthday of November 11.)


End file.
